Barbara Keith, a self-taught mosaicist, discovered the process after finding herself with a stash of scraps from a stained glass project. Assembling the glass into grout, she found that she loved the freedom of the form. Ancient mosaics observed on a trip to Italy fed her interest. Barbara says her pieces “have been coming fast and furious ever since.”

The Lanesboro, MN artist holds a master’s degree in education from Hamline University and worked as a kindergarten teacher and in professional theater before establishing herself as a full-time artist. Barbara has participated in numerous exhibitions, including solo shows at the Phipps Center for the Arts in Hudson, WI and at the Bloomington Center for the Arts in Bloomington, MN. She is a regular – and ribbon winning – exhibitor at the annual Minnesota State Fair Fine Arts Exhibition and won an Emerging Artist Grant from FORECAST Public Arts. She has completed public art pieces in Minnesota for the Bemidji Regional Event Center, the Roseville Bandshell, and Rochester’s Mayo Clinic, and is also represented in the collection of Kaiser Permanente Hospital in Los Angeles. Barbara’s mosaics are featured as illustrations in her books The Girls and Boys of Mother Goose and Mosaic Zoo: An ABC Book.

Barbara states, “Though I love completing a piece, one of my favorite parts of the process is looking at a blank space and knowing that before long I will have filled it, but at the moment, I have no idea what shape my creation will take. I love working with glass. It is a very unique medium for mosaics and it is very striking whether viewed up close or from a distance. I’m fascinated with its special way of playing with the light, shining and showing off its beautiful color, and its ability to create the illusion of depth.”